"We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usual: "In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past.""

"Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is."

"And I thought that were we now to obtain political liberty, of which we talk so much, while engaged in biting one another, we should not know what to do with it, we should waste it in accusing one another in the newspapers of being spies and money-grubbers, we should frighten society with the assurance that we have neither men, nor science, nor literature, nothing! Nothing!"

"It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution."

"Do you know when you may concede your insignificance? In front of God or, perhaps, in front of the intellect, beauty, or nature, but not in front of people. Among people, one must be conscious of one’s dignity."

"A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings."

"Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all."

"Hoping for the critics' indulgence, the author asks to send money for his story immediately, otherwise his wife and kids will die of hunger."

"Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author’s own conscience."

"Oh, what women are here!"

"I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles."

"Writers are as jealous as pigeons."

"Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else’s opinion and without the fear of hindering one another."

"Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state."

"I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity."

"I don’t know why one can’t chase two rabbits at the same time, even in the literal sense of those words. If you have the hounds, go ahead and pursue."

"There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked."

"It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesn’t understand."

"A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe.... What a terrible future!"

"He who doesn’t know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others’ successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs."

"You are right to demand that an artist engage his work consciously, but you confuse two different things: solving the problem and correctly posing the question."

"I have in my head a whole army of people pleading to be let out and awaiting my commands."

"We learn about life not from pluses alone, but from minuses as well."

"It doesn’t matter that your painting is small. Kopecks are also small, but when a lot are put together they make a ruble. Each painting displayed in a gallery and each good book that makes it into a library, no matter how small they may be, serve a great cause: accretion of the national wealth."

"Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress."

"Neither I nor anyone else knows what a standard is. We all recognize a dishonorable act, but have no idea what honor is."

"Lermontov died at age twenty-eight and wrote more than have you and I put together. Talent is recognizable not only by quality, but also by the quantity it yields."

"Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure."

"Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it."

"When a person doesn’t understand something, he feels internal discord: however he doesn’t search for that discord in himself, as he should, but searches outside of himself. Thence a war develops with that which he doesn’t understand."

"Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms."

"I drank so much in Peter that Russia should be proud of me!"

"The world is a fine place. The only thing wrong with it is us. How little justice and humility there is in us, how poorly we understand patriotism!"

"All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity."

"I think that it would be less difficult to live eternally than to be deprived of sleep throughout life."

"In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it."

"We old bachelors smell like dogs, do we? So be it. But I must take issue with your claim that doctors who treat female illnesses are womanizers and cynics at heart. Gynecologists deal with savage prose the likes of which you have never dreamed of."

"He who constantly swims in the ocean loves dry land."

"Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one."

"Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable."

"I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities."

"When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries."

"Prudence and justice tell me that in electricity and steam there is more love for man than in chastity and abstinence from meat."

"Between "there is a God" and "there is no God" lies a whole vast tract, which the really wise man crosses with great effort. A Russian knows one or other of these two extremes, and the middle tract between them does not interest him; and therefore he usually knows nothing, or very little. (Diary, 1897)"